Talk:Practice theory

Older comments

I'm glad to see that there's a starter page on "practice theory". I was actually looking for "theory of practice", which is more associated with Pierre Bourdieu's work. In my opinion -- as someone who has read Bourdieu, but isn't a philosopher (and never studied it in university), "theory of practice" is a better description. (It's probably worth discussing).

I found this page on Practice_theory as I was looking for Practice_turn, in the way that there is a Linguistic_turn.

I don't feel qualified to start up these new pages, or have a serious discussion about their content. Any philosophers out there willing and able to tackle this?

Daviding (talk) 14:07, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Equally glad to see this account of the practices perspective or practices theory which has now been adopted by many in .. business, ethnographic, media, social studies. One important reference is omitted - to the founding philosophical sources, Martin Heidegger and Ludvig Wittgenstein.

Despite the alleged difficulty associated with former (and perhaps the latter), Heidegger offers an acutely perceptive account of practical understanding in Being and Time (translated 1962), to which subsequent scholars may not have greatly added more than complexity [see Reckwitz (2002)]. A good introduction is available online, Stephen Mulhall's (1996) book Heidegger and Being and Time.

Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics - or philosophy of understanding-in-practice(s) - emphasizes the practical dimension (or ‘moment’) of understanding as an embodied process, elaborated in his Being and Time (1962). His representing human understanding at its core as 'always already' concerned with a practical 'take' on experience is significant because it provides a route into discussing, for instance, media audience focus groups. Practices are ‘where understanding is structured and intelligibility articulated’ (Schatzki, 1996: 12). Thus behaviour embodies narrative ‘projection’: people share a culturally (in)formed, practical 'fore-understanding' of their environment as equipment, initiating and instituting this perspective in activity, enabling 'being-with-others' (Heidegger).

References: Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row. Reckwitz, A. (2002) ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices A Development in Culturalist Theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory 5(2): 243-263. Schatzki, T.R. (1996) Social Practices A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batu Ferringhi (talk • contribs) 04:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Headings

I feel like the headings on this article should be improved as they are out of the norm, but I am not familiar enough with this area to improve them. I would suggest the "Name" headings become subheadings, or they are renamed as to what the theorist pertains to Carlinmack (talk) 00:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Contemporary Anthropological Theory

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2022 and 4 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ArcheoAguila (article contribs). Peer reviewers: JamesZD online, Bioarchaeo.

Bibliography

Archer, Margaret S. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre [1972] 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre ( 1990). The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Polity Press.

Calhoun, Craig, Edward LiPuma, and Moishe Postone (1993). Bourdieu: critical perspectives. University of Chicago Press.

de Certeau, Michel (1984). “Foucault and Bourdieu”. In The practice of everyday life. Trans. Rendall S. F.University of California Press.

Giddens, Anthony (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. University of California Press.

Giddens, Anthony ( 1984). The Constitution Of Society: Outline Of A Theory Of Structuration. Polity Press.

Moore, Jerry D.(2000). Visions of culture: An introduction to anthropological theories and theorists. Rowman Altamira.

Ortner, Sherry B (2006). Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Duke University Press.

Turner, Stephen (1994). The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions. University of Chicago Press.

I am working on reorganizing and expanding on the references for this page ArcheoAguila (talk) 04:46, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Article Outline

Contents

1 Definitions

2 History

2.1 Origins- Pierre Bourdieu

3 Practice Theory in anthropology

3.1 Sherry Ortner

3.2 Practice Theory in Archaeology

4 Reception and Criticism

5 References ArcheoAguila (talk) 04:46, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Brief comment

These references and outline look solid, though working through books is always challenging. For some shorter works that consider and attempt to narrate the influence of practice theory in anthropology, these might be useful:

• Ahearn, Laura M. (2001). "Language and Agency". Annual Review of Anthropology. 30 (1): 109–137. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.109. Retrieved 2014-12-16.
• Ortner, Sherry B. (2006-11-30). "INTRODUCTION. Updating Practice Theory". INTRODUCTION. Updating Practice Theory. Duke University Press. pp. 1–18. ISBN 978-0-8223-8845-6. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Morris, Rosalind C. (1995). "All made up: Performance theory and the new anthropology of sex and gender". Annual review of anthropology. 24 (1): 567–592.

--Carwil (talk) 22:05, 19 April 2022 (UTC)